Curator: Lucie Pangrácová

White & Weiss Gallery opens its autumn season with an exhibition by a prominent Czech sculptor, Michal Gabriel. He is coming back to Bratislava after six years, when his cycle Female Yogis was the first exhibition in a then newly opened White & Weiss Gallery in 2016. This show – Private Monuments presents his more subtle works, based on the original sketches of bigger pieces.

Often, Gabriel’s sculptures emerge from a discovery of the artwork’s form during its creation. Very rarely does he have a premeditated concept, which he then brings to fruition using his artistic materials. Typically, his works slowly hatch from uncertainty, with each and every creative phase inspiring the next one. The sculpture is not only constantly finding  its external form, but also its meaning, and only then its name. As if it was emerging from the subconsciousness and unconsciousness and only once finished could its essence be deciphered.

Michal Gabriel (b. 1960 in Prague), comes from the artistic group The Stubborn, one of the most prominent and distinctive groups of Czech artists. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and received the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. In 2009, he was appointed as professor. Since 1998, he has been Head of the Sculpture Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Brno University of Technology, where he has established a unique Studio of Digital Sculpture. Many of his free-standing sculptures have already become iconic examples of the art of its times and have made a significant mark on the public space they inhabit. Examples of an outstanding list of private and public commissions include a monumental gate at the Veltržní palác in Prague, a sculpture of a winged leopard at the entrance to the President’s Office of the Czech Republic at the Prague Castle, a sculpture of four horses for a water cascade in Dejvice as well as the interior of an Indonesian jungle pavilion in the Prague ZOO. This year, he created a technologically unique memorial to Charles IV. From stainless steel in Karlove Vary.